As I approached their porch, I saw a man sitting there that I hadn’t previously seen. Destine Mavoy knew who he was, though, and introduced this man to me as Jerome. Destine then spoke to me in English and told me that Jerome was from his home town of Guillaumonde, a 2-hour walk from the village of Peredo. Destine revealed that this man was the premier vodou priest in Guillaumonde and that we should talk to him about the Lord.
Sano was a young man who terrorized an entire area of a village. Everyone was afraid of the black magic that he would practice against people. I wasn’t aware of Sano until a vodou priestess (who I was sharing the gospel with) told me about him and literally begged me to go to him. When I showed up to his home, I immediately saw a small grave that represented his allegiance to a very dark demon. God empowered me at that point and I opened the conversation by asking Sano why he was tempting God to destroy him where he sat.
Latigue is a man in his 60's who I was never planning to see, due to the fact that I wasn’t aware of him or his involvement in vodou. I was actually on my way to see a vodou priest named Sila (who we have now been to many times). But that day Sila wasn’t at home. As we were leaving Sila’s property, a local man mentioned that another vodou priest lived nearby. Understanding this to be from the Lord, we went to this man’s home.
Hello Charis family! I pray that this blog finds all of you both seeking and living within our heavenly Father’s will for your lives. Things are busy in Haiti as God continues to move powerfully through His Holy Spirit within us. Our third mission team of the year just left Haiti and we are looking forward to three more teams coming down to serve before the end of April! The first three teams were a great blessing to the ministry. It is an honor for us to have the opportunity to directly observe the diversity of gifts and strengths that God has placed within each of His sons and daughters to advance the work of the great commission!
We have arrived back in Haiti safely, and we want to thank you, our many friends, who have been praying for our safe travel and arrival. CHARIS is a Holy Spirit-led, God-anointed ministry that is focused on bringing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ten million people of Haiti, many of whom are enslaved to Satan and his demonic legions via the ancient tribal religion known as vodou. You are all a part of this ministry, and God has honored all of us with the task of turning the Haitian people “from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith” (Acts 26:18). So we want to start this new season in Haiti with a genuine thank you to all of you, and we humbly ask that you please continue to pray and support this ministry that is producing fruit and expanding God’s kingdom here on earth!
As stated in the November newsletter, this month’s content will focus on demonic opposition and how this is an inevitable reality in any ministry that the Holy Spirit is working through. I would like to start with a short discussion about demons, Satan, and their collaborative and collective purpose in relation to ministries and the lives of Christians in general. Satan wasn’t always Satan, but rather he was God’s most beautiful angelic creation who was then known as Lucifer which means ‘light bearer’ or ‘morning star’. Lucifer became proud and desired to ascend to a position higher then God. His heavenly rebellion gained followers (a third of the angels), and in his attempt to climb higher then God he, and all of his followers, were thrown from heaven to the earth before man was created (see Isaiah 14:12-14, and Ezekiel 28:13-17a). This expulsion from heaven and God’s presence was permanent and irreversible. God then made man in His image (Genesis 1:26), perfect and immortal, but man, like Satan, fell to pride and resultantly disobeyed God which resulted in death and sin being incorporated into man’s natural existence on earth. Thus, sin was now forever incorporated into the human fabric creating what we now refer to as our ‘fallen nature’.
CHARIS family! It has been so great being back in the States for the holidays and having the privilege and opportunity to talk with many of you, speak at your churches and small groups, and discuss the ministry with those of you who have questions. Joy and I really do wish that we could spend an afternoon with every one of you and discuss Haiti and the miraculous things that are occurring on an almost daily basis. Before we get into the crux of this newsletter I do want all of you who are reading this to know that Joy and I are accessible and would love to answer any questions or address concerns that any of you may have about the ministry of CHARIS. In case you don’t already have our contact information here are our email addresses and website. Malcolm: mhenderson@charis4haiti.com, Joy: jhenderson@charis4haiti.com, CHARIS website: www.charis4haiti.com. Please email us with any inquiries and visit the website for ministry information-- don’t be shy, we look forward to hearing from you!
“Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say,’…” Genesis 3:1
These are the opening words of the conversation between Satan (the serpent), and Eve which led to the fall of man. Notice Satan’s tactic here—he asks Eve if God really said not to eat from the tree in the garden. What Satan was asking Eve to do was question God’s perfection, question God’s purpose behind His commands, and thus question God’s Sovereignty! To the contemporary reader it is easy to see the abominable nature of Satan’s strategy—how dare he deceive Eve through essentially calling God a liar Who doesn’t mean what He says. But, before we pass judgment let us concern ourselves with the plank in our own eye!
"I..pray..that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me."
John 17:20
I recently discussed this verse with a group of Haitian pastors in an effort to reveal Biblical truth concerning ‘church pride’. In Haiti you hear a lot of, “my church is better than yours” type of talk. Sadly, when I pondered the American church, I was forced to acknowledge the exact same occurrence. It’s not so much, “my church is better than your church” in America, but rather it is an overall issue of Christian unity and our great failure to adhere to this desire of Jesus.
“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers”.
1 Timothy 4:16
Endurance is a word that is inseparable from the Christian life and inherent to our new birth in Christ upon our salvation. Why are these words so frequently used in Scripture, and what are we enduring? Endure is used 94 times in the New Testament and for good reason. As missionaries, the extent to which we endure is the extent of success experienced in building God’s kingdom on this earth.
